More surf, different beach!

Troels was invited by his danish friend living in Costa Rica to go to Tamarindo, and since we had the week off before our first performance with Tempos, surf and relax on the beach would be the best warm up ;) In addition to the two danish guys already in Costa Rica Troels got a visit from another danish friend, so I was going to travel with 3 danish guys :)

Because of two different online bus schedules we arrived the bus station 3 hours before the bus was leaving. During our wait I showed our new danish guy, Martin, downtown San José. Obviously they started to celebrate the new year and they had a parade with a lot of their traditional carretas.

After several hours on a not so comfortable bus we finally arrived Tamarindo to see the sunset!

There were more people on the beach to watch the sunset :)

Christian is living in Costa Rica and he loves to go to the beach and surf. Every morning we would walk to another beach he knew, Playa Langosta, which was better to surf and with less people.

The first morning we got up to surf at about 6am! It was soo early, but soo worth it. When we were warming up on the beach we saw a huge whale jumping up from the water!!

There were a few good waves to practice my surfing ;)

When there were no waves we would just have fun in the water...

...or practice sitting on the board waiting for the waves :p

In the evenings we would make a bon fire on the beach and enjoy the sunset ;)

It was amazing, and to give you a sense of what I'm experiencing I made this time lapse.

Día de la independencia!

So today was the independence day of Costa Rica! Yesterday they had some entertainment and speeches in the park. A tradition for the day before the independence day is to make a farol, which is a box with a light in it.

There were many different farols, and they gave out prices for the best and most creative ones. 

Today it was possible to see the Costa Rican flag everywhere (they have actually been around for the whole month).

It is a tradition that all the schools participate in parades around the local churches and their parks.

There were many different outfits to see in the parades, but this is the most traditional outfit of Costa Rica.

One thing the parades are well known for are the marching bands! They have been practicing since school started in February, and I have been hearing them practicing the last few weeks. The most common instruments in the bands are drums and liras.

A lot of the bands also had some other instruments. I really don't know the name of this instrument, but it was cool ;)

Here is a video of the most popular performance in the parade.

And here is an example of the loud noise they can make with their drums!

After the parade in Moravia was finished I moved on to Coronado, known for its old gothic church. The parade was pretty much longer, and there were much more people than in Moravia.

Here is another traditional outfit used for Costa Rican dancing.

There were a lot of nice and different traditional Costa Rican dances to see today.

Some of the bands also had brass instruments.

And some of the musicians played on several drums ;)

 In addition to music and dancing there were some cheerleading teams that would have short performances :)

In front of the bands there would be more students dancing to the music. This was the last school in the parade in Coronado.

 I had a great day with a lot to hear and see! The sun was also shining, so I got a little sunburnt :P

¡Viva Costa Rica!